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Egypt's Mubarak: Golan Could Have Been Syria's If It Recognized Israel
(Jerusalem Post) Anna Ahronheim - Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told al-Hayat that Syria rejected an Israeli offer to return the Golan Heights in 1998 in exchange for the normalization of relations and the opening of embassies in the two countries. The offer was rejected by former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. Uzi Arad, a former adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Israel's Army Radio that Netanyahu held two rounds of "serious" negotiations over the past decade with Damascus over relinquishing the Israeli Golan Heights to Syria. The talks that began in 2010 were halted in 2011 due to the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. But, as former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro told the Jerusalem Post, "It was a fool's errand. The Syrians were never prepared to end their relations with Iran and their support for Hizbullah. That was far more important for the Assad regime than recovering the Golan Heights."